It’s unclear right now exactly how many people were cut throughout the building, but four sources familiar with today’s events said the knife went deep. The newsroom alone was reduced by more than half and the rest of the newspaper saw similar cutbacks.

Just 14 staffers will be left to run the Tribune’s news operations under the new owner, the sources said. The newsroom already underwent significant cuts in recent years and was down to fewer than 35 employees before today’s announcement.

Among those let go from the newsroom, the sources said, was the entire business desk, most of the copy desk and all but one photographer. [List posted below.]

The staffers who were kept on include longtime sports editor Bob Romantic, who will be elevated to the head of the newsroom. News editors CeCe Todd and John Yantis will also be kept on.

The cuts hardly come as a surprise. Staffers were told for months that Miller planned to let go of some employees when he bought the newspaper from Freedom Communications. That deal was given the green light by a federal judge on Tuesday.

But few expected the cuts to go so deep. When Miller was negotiating to buy the newspaper, he said publicly that he planned to keep a “significant” number of employees but never gave an exact count.

Only this morning did the extent of the layoffs become clear.

When they arrived at work today, employees were told they would be summoned via email to one of two meetings.

At the first meeting at 10 a.m., the sources said, dozens of employees were brought into a room on the ground floor where outgoing publisher Julie Moreno told them they were being let go. One source said the mood was exactly what you’d expect: grim. There was nervous laughter, a few tears and a lot of sad faces.

A half hour later, another group of staffers met with Miller in a room on the second floor, where he handed them letters with job offers under the new regime. There, the sources said, Miller also outlined his plan for the reorganized Tribune.

He told them the newspaper will have just one edition instead of its current four. That edition will carry the full East Valley Tribune moniker, which Freedom dropped from the print editions last year in favor of names like the Mesa Tribune and the Queen Creek Tribune.

The newspaper will also apparently push back into Tempe, a city it previously abandoned. One source said Miller plans to place about 30 newspaper racks throughout the city’s downtown area. He will also continue to distribute the newspaper for free throughout the East Valley.

Miller told his future staff that he hopes to make the newspaper financially viable again, which the current owners had failed to do despite multiple experiments and years of cutbacks. A recent court filing by Freedom Communications said the Tribune has recently been losing about $60,000 a week.

This is the second time in two years the Tribune has undergone a massive downsizing. In January 2009, the newspaper laid off about 140 people, which equaled about about 40 percent of its staff.

Later that year, the Tribune saw smaller rounds of layoffs, but many staffers, including the top editor, also quit on their own accord. Most of their positions were never filled again.

After today, the newspaper will operate a just a fraction of the size it maintained even just three or four years ago.

[Note: Heat City will post updates if they happen. For now, here are two lists. One is the list of newsroom staffers who were laid off. The other is those who were offered new jobs. The names have been confirmed through multiple sources. Comments? Corrections? Additions? Email me.]

Laid-off staffers from the newsroom

Ralph Freso, photographer
Darryl Webb, photo editor
Tom Boggan, photographer
CJ Coppola, office manager
Ari Cohn, news reporter
Hayley Ringle, news reporter
Gary Grado, news reporter
Blake Herzog, news reporter
David Woodfill, business reporter
Edward Gately, business reporter
Ed Taylor, business reporter
Les Willsey, sports reporter
Jess Harter, dining critic
Gary Smith, copy desk
Darren Barakat, copy desk
Mike Gossie, copy desk
Michael Welton, copy desk
Steve Burks, copy desk
Chris Adams, copy desk
Matt Swartz, copy desk

Newsroom staffers offered new jobs (titles unclear)

John Yantis
CeCe Todd
Mandy Zajac
Garin Groff
Mike Sakal
Tim Hacker
Amanda Rohrer
Michelle Reese
Charlie Hammer
Jayson Peters
Sonu Munshi
Mark Heller
Kyle Odegard
Bob Romantic
Amanda Keim (transferring to Ahwatukee Foothills News)

[Full disclosure: I am a former East Valley Tribune reporter and was among the 140 laid off in January 2009.]

The East Valley Tribune, which for months has survived in a state of corporate limbo, finally learned its fate on Tuesday.

The Mesa newspaper will have its fourth owner in less than 15 years after a federal judge gave his blessing for the Tribune and its sister newspapers to be sold to a small Colorado publisher for a little more than $2 million.

The approval clears the way for Randy Miller, who owns Thirteenth Street Media in Boulder, Colo., to buy the newspapers from their current owner, media giant Freedom Communications. The deal is expected to be completed before the end of the month.

“We are excited to complete the legal process and work with our employees and advertisers to build solid, community-oriented newspapers,” Miller said in a prepared statement.

As part of the deal, Miller will also get the Ahwatukee Daily News in Phoenix, the Daily News-Sun in Sun City, several small specialty publications and a building in Sun City valued by the county assessor at about $2.1 million.

In the meantime, Miller will begin to take over day-to-day operations of the newspapers until the deal formally goes through, the Tribune reported on its website.

The past four and a half months have been an agonizing period for the East Valley Tribune, a time when the newspaper was unsure whether it even had a future.

In the beginning of November, Freedom Communications, which had recently entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, announced it planned to shut down the Tribune by the end of 2009.

The company planned to keep its other local newspapers, but the Tribune was just losing too much money to stay open, Freedom executives said.

Less than three weeks later, Miller emerged as a possible buyer of the newspaper, and Freedom agreed to keep the presses running until a deal could be reached.

All the while, the bankruptcy meant a federal judge would have to sign off before the deal went through.

Layoffs coming

But while the judge’s approval Tuesday answered a big question about who will control the Tribune, other questions remain about what Miller plans to do with the place.

In a memo sent shortly after the deal was OK’d, outgoing publisher Julie Moreno told staffers those answers will come soon enough, too.

Moreno told employees they will each find out in “the next two days” whether Miller will be keeping them on staff. Some will be given letters asking them to stay. Others will be handed a severance package and shown the door.

Miller has said previously that he plans to hang onto a “significant” number of staffers, but he has been no more specific than that.

Cuts to the newspaper’s staff, however, are likely to be deep. Freedom said recently the Tribune is losing about $60,000 a week. That means the new owner would have to cut more than $3 million from his annual costs simply to break even.

It appears employees are bracing for the worst, too. Without knowing who will be on the chopping block, staffers are already planning at least one farewell party in Tempe on Wednesday evening.

As for the rest of Miller’s plans, a story on the Tribune’s website said he expects to return the “East Valley Tribune” name to all of the newspaper’s print editions.

In 2009, Freedom Communications split the newspaper into four separate editions, naming each after the cities they covered. Readers were left receiving the Mesa Tribune, Chandler Tribune, Gilbert Tribune or Queen Creek Tribune, but there was no longer a print edition carrying the East Valley moniker.

Miller is buying the newspapers with a company called 1013 Communications, whose name appears to pay homage to the journalism program at Iowa State University. The company is affiliated with Miller’s other business, Thirteenth Street Media, which operates weekly newspapers in Telluride, Colo., and the suburbs of Tucson.

Freedom, which plans to emerge from federal bankruptcy protection later this month, bought the East Valley Tribune in 2000 from Thomson Newspapers. Thomson bought the paper from Cox Enterprises in 1996.

[Full disclosure: I am a former staff reporter for the East Valley Tribune.]

For the past several months, Stephen Hadland, the chief executive of the Santa Monica Media Company, said he planned to try to outbid Miller for the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper.

But Hadland told Heat City on Friday he had been unable to convince his investors to pony up enough cash to jump into a bidding war with a Miller’s Thirteenth Street Media.

“All I can say is I’m very, very disappointed,” said Hadland, who repeatedly called the sale of the Tribune and its sister newspapers “the deal of a lifetime.”

Barring any last-minute surprises, Hadland’s withdraw means that Miller has a clear path to take over the Tribune, as well as the Ahwatukee Foothills News in Phoenix and the Daily News-Sun in Sun City.

The three newspapers are being sold by media giant Freedom Communications, which is trying to earn some quick cash to help it get out from under nearly $1 billion in debt.

That same debt forced Freedom into federal bankruptcy protection last year, and because of that, the sale must be approved by a judge before it can go through.

That approval could come at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to discuss the deal. If approved, the sale could be completed as soon as Wednesday.

The bankruptcy, however, also means that Freedom had to open the bidding process to the public and consider any serious offers for the three Phoenix-area newspapers.

In documents filed last month, Freedom told the federal judge overseeing its case that Miller, with his offer of a little more than $2 million, had been the only serious bidder to come forward.

Hadland disputed that, though, saying publicly on several occasions he believed his California-based company had the wherewithal to offer even more but that Freedom was no longer taking him seriously.

In fact, Hadland said he had been in negotiations with Freedom to buy the three newspapers in August, months before they were even officially put on the market. But, he said, those negotiations broke down after he was unable to come up with the cash in time to close the deal.

Freedom confirms earlier deal

Freedom declined for months to comment on Hadland’s claims of an earlier deal. But on Friday, the company broke its silence in a series of documents [PDF] filed in the bankruptcy case.

The documents confirmed that Freedom had agreed to sell the newspapers to Hadland’s Santa Monica Media Company for about $2 million. But, the company said, the deal fell apart when Hadland failed to pay them a $200,000 deposit.

The account matched Hadland’s version of things, but Freedom was using it to tell the judge why the California company should not be taken seriously if it indeed made a play for the newspapers.

But by the time Freedom filed the documents on Friday, the point was already moot.

Hadland said he talked with his investors for the past three weeks and realized on Friday that he could not come up with the cash to challenge Miller’s bid.

Once again, he said his biggest struggle was finding somebody to write a check for the 10 percent down payment that Freedom wanted.

“That’s been my stumbling block,” Hadland said. “Nobody wanted to put up a check for that much.”

It has become a lot harder in recent years to convince lenders to invest in newspapers, he said. “The climate has changed so drastically, getting anything financed is really tough.”

Try, try again

Hadland, whose company operates a small chain of weekly newspapers in California, has long had aspirations of owning a bigger newspaper.

He tried to buy the Tucson Citizen, Arizona’s longest-running newspaper, last year for about $400,000. But the paper’s parent company, Gannett, decided to shut it down instead of selling it at such a low price. The Citizen now operates as a community blogging website.

Hadland also offered to buy the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in Hawaii in 2000 for an undisclosed price. He ultimately lost out to another bidder.

Having failed at least his third major newspaper takeover in 11 years, Hadland said he isn’t giving up his search for the next “deal of a lifetime.”

“I’ll be looking for my next media purchase,” he said. “There’s a lot of newspaper companies in trouble.”

What’s to come

Meantime, this will be a defining week for the East Valley Tribune and its sister papers.

If Randy Miller’s bid is approved on Tuesday, the Tribune will likely undergo almost immediate cutbacks.

Miller, who has not returned multiple phone calls seeking for comment on the deal, has said in prepared statements that he will keep a “significant” number of employees, implying that a number of other employees will be cut.

The current owners, though, have said that the newspaper is losing money at a staggering rate. In court documents, Freedom Communications said the Tribune loses about $60,000 a week, which adds up to a little more than $3 million a year.

That means to simply break even, the new owner will have to cut enough employees or other costs from the budget to make up for the gap.

At that rate, dozens of employees could be eliminated under the new regime unless it can afford to operate with significant losses.

[Full disclosure: I am a former staff reporter for the East Valley Tribune.]

A California newspaper publisher says he believes he has the means to make a better offer for the East Valley Tribune and its sister newspapers than the one announced Tuesday in federal court.

Stephen Hadland, the chief executive of the Santa Monica Media Company, would not disclose how much money he plans to offer. But he said he thinks his pitch will be more attractive than the $2.05 million being offered by Colorado newspaperman Randy Miller.

Miller’s bid was revealed Tuesday in federal court in Delaware as part of the bankruptcy process for Freedom Communications, which currently owns the newspapers. The media giant wants to sell all of its papers in the Phoenix metro area to help pay off part of its $1 billion debt.

Under the rules of bankruptcy, Freedom must put the newspapers up for public auction and let a judge determine which bid is best. Hadland said he expects to put up enough cash from investors in the next three weeks to make a serious challenge to Miller’s bid.

“I feel very confident,” Hadland said. “I’ve had six months to work on this and I have a half dozen investors and financers lined up.”

Hadland has had his eye on the Pulitzer Prize-winning East Valley Tribune, as well as the Ahwatukee Foothills News in Phoenix and the Daily News-Sun in Sun City, since last summer when he was in talks to buy them from Freedom.

He said Freedom at the time was willing to sell him all three newspapers for a flat $2 million, but he was unable to pull the financing together before the company declared bankruptcy on Sept. 1.

“We had this deal prior to the bankruptcy and we needed a couple extra days to sell a municipal bond,” Hadland said. “Two days later, we had the money, but it was two days too late.”

Robert Emmers, a spokesman for Freedom, would not discuss the details of the bid or even confirm the company had been in talks with Hadland.

“I’m not going to comment on any negotiations that may or may not have taken place,” Emmers said.

‘That party’

Hadland, who runs a small chain of weekly newspapers in southern California, said Freedom referenced his previous offer in the documents it filed Tuesday in federal court.

Buried within hundreds of pages submitted to the court, Freedom mentioned several other people or companies that were interested in buying at least one of the Phoenix-area newspapers. None of them were explicitly named, but Freedom talked about each one in vague, anonymous terms.

One of the potential suitors, for instance, wanted to buy the Ahwatukee Foothills News and Daily News-Sun but had no interest in the Tribune, the documents said. Others were interested in one paper or another but not the entire group.

But the documents also mentioned another potential buyer – someone besides Miller – who was interested in buying all three newspapers. There were problems with the offer, though.

“That party’s proposed purchase price was lower than (Miller’s),” the documents said, “and that party was unable to demonstrate that it had the financial wherewithal to consummate the transaction.”

Hadland said he was “that party” and his bid was $2 million. And while he said it’s true the figure was lower than Miller’s $2.05 million offer, it was only $50,000 off the mark. “Clearly this is a doable deal for us,” Hadland said.

Now, Hadland has the chance to show publicly whether he truly has the backing to outbid Miller, who has emerged as the front runner for buying the newspapers.

But he – or any serious bidder – will first have to clear a number of hurdles that Freedom put up to weed out halfhearted offers.

The criteria

In its court filings this week, Freedom Communications laid out 13 criteria that anybody besides Miller would have to meet before submitting an offer to buy the newspapers.

Many of the criteria are intuitive: the offer has to be made before the deadline; it has to be for all three newspapers plus the other assets; and it has to be in U.S. dollars.

But the company also set a hefty price to even enter the auction. Anyone hoping to challenge Miller’s bid must first hand over a 10-percent deposit, which would be more than $205,000, before they can get a foot in the door, according to the court records.

The documents didn’t say whether Miller had to put down such a deposit. But they did say anybody who makes a serious offer and loses the auction will be given their deposit back. If, however, the outsider wins the auction but fails to follow through on the purchase, Freedom will keep the cash.

Hadland said the cash up front will be his biggest hurdle. Freedom set a March 8 deadline for offers to be made, giving him less than three weeks to organize his investors and hand over the cash to show he is serious.

“Our only problem will be timing,” Hadland said. “This is a pretty quick turnaround.”

Whether he jumps in or not, the fate of the three newspapers will be known soon enough. Freedom wants a hearing to be scheduled for March 9, the day after the deadline, to discuss the sale. If set, the judge overseeing the bankruptcy could decide as early as then who will take over the newspapers.

[Full disclosure: I am a former staff reporter for the East Valley Tribune.]

The current owner of the papers, Freedom Communications in Irvine, Calif., has been talking publicly since September about selling the Mesa-based Tribune along with the Ahwatukee Foothills News in Phoenix and the Daily News-Sun in Sun City.

But the media giant has struggled to put together a deal that would bring in enough cash to help begin to pay off roughly $1 billion in debt the company had compiled nationwide, which landed the chain in bankruptcy last year.

Today, after months of negotiations and false starts, Freedom finally announced the details of a plan to sell the three newspapers to Colorado publisher Randy Miller, who also owns newspapers in Tucson and Telluride, Colo. In doing so, the company also opened the door for anyone else to try to outbid Miller as part of a public auction process required by the bankruptcy court.

Under the just-announced deal, Miller would get the three newspapers, their printing presses and the building in Sun City occupied by Daily News-Sun, as well as all the trimmings that go along with owning a newspaper, such as its fleet of vehicles and use of trademarks.

Noticeably missing from the deal, however, is the Tribune’s headquarters in downtown Mesa, which the county government says is worth almost $7 million.

In exchange, Miller would pay $2.05 million. But he would also take over an operation which Freedom said is losing about $60,000 a week.

Any deal is still subject to approval from the federal bankruptcy judge in Delaware who is overseeing the case. The same judge will also be choosing from among the bids if others decide to compete against Miller.

Other bidders have until March 8 to submit their offer. A hearing will be held the following day to discuss the sale, and the judge could decide as soon as then whether to allow the deal to take place.

No matter whether Miller comes out on top, though, he represents something of a savior for the East Valley Tribune, which had the most tumultuous year of its existence in 2009. After months of layoffs and cost cutting, Freedom announced in November the cuts had not been enough; it planned to shut down the newspaper by the end of the year.

But just three weeks after the announcement, Miller stepped forward with a letter of intent to buy the Tribune and keep it afloat. Freedom called off the closure.

Since then, Miller has also said he would like to buy the Tribune’s sister papers in the Phoenix area, neither of which was ever publicly threatened with closure. The deal was slow coming, though. Freedom had originally planned to file today’s announcement with the court back on Dec. 24, but the negotiations continued well into the new year.

“I know that dealing with the uncertainty of the past several months has been difficult,” Freedom’s chief executive Burl Osborne wrote in a memo sent today to employees of the three newspapers. “I want to thank all of you for your continued focus and dedication as we worked to achieve this sale.”

But while some of the ongoing questions were settled by today’s announcement, many uncertainties remain until the deal is finalized.

For one, Miller has said he plans to keep a “significant number” of employees – but not all of them, meaning layoffs will ensue if he buys the newspaper.

Osborne said in his memo that question would be answered soon, too. Under the deal, employees who are being laid off will be handed pink slips the day after the bankruptcy court gives its approval.

[Full disclosure: I am a former reporter for the East Valley Tribune.]

The Colorado man who wants to buy the East Valley Tribune newspaper in Mesa has expanded his offer to include its two local sister papers.

The Ahwatukee Foothills News in Phoenix and the Daily News-Sun in Sun City are now part of newspaperman Randy Miller’s offer to buy the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tribune from its bankrupt parent company, according to three sources familiar with the discussions.

Representatives from the parent, Freedom Communications, told employees about the larger deal this morning during simultaneous staff meetings at the papers, the sources said.

The bigger deal marks another U-turn for Freedom, which has gone back and forth between wanting to sell the other two newspapers and wanting to keep them. The company said in mid-September it planned to sell the sister papers along with the Tribune, but then it took them off the table by the time Miller signed his letter of intent to buy the Mesa newspaper in November.

Two of the sources said the new deal still does not include the Tribune’s downtown Mesa headquarters, a building and property valued at more than $7 million. But it does include the building and printing press in Sun City.

The expansion could explain why it has taken so long for Freedom and Miller to tell a federal bankruptcy court about their proposed deal. The two sides were expected to file a motion outlining the deal in late December.

But when no motion was filed that month, a spokeswoman for Freedom said talks were continuing.

Miller, who owns the Thirteenth Street Media company in Boulder, Colo., emerged as the potential savior for the Tribune in November, just days after its parent company said it would shut the paper down by the end of the year if no buyer came forward.

Since then, the newspaper has continued printing on an interim basis while the details are being worked out.

Even with today’s news that his offer has expanded, however, the deal between the two sides is not guaranteed.

Freedom’s status in Chapter 11 bankruptcy means that the company must first put the newspapers up for what amounts to a public auction – one that’s run by a federal court – in which anyone can make a better bid. After all the offers are in, a judge will then which one is best.

At least one other potential buyer has said he plans to put in a bid with the court. Stephen Hadland, the chief executive of the Santa Monica Media Company in California, said he plans to aggressively challenge Miller’s offer.

Still, Miller has already been acting like the man who will take over the Phoenix-area newspapers. He has told employees of the Tribune to reapply for their jobs under his company and also told them about his plans should the deal go through.

That pattern appears to be continuing. Two sources said today that Miller was planning to visit the offices of the Ahwatukee Foothills News this afternoon.

Though the fate of the struggling East Valley Tribune remains uncertain, one thing became clear on Thursday: Any future the Mesa newspaper has will be without its head editor, Chris Coppola.

The longtime Tribune newsman announced he will step down Jan. 8 to take a job as a suburban editor at the Arizona Republic.

The New Year’s Eve announcement marked the end of an especially turbulent year for the newspaper, one in which it laid off half its staff, brought home a Pulitzer Prize and narrowly staved off closure.

Coppola, who would have celebrated his 20th year with the paper in March, says the chance to move to the state’s largest daily was just too good to pass up.

“This was a very good opportunity that came at the right time for me,” Coppola said in an email. “It wasn’t easy letting folks here know I was leaving. But this staff is a talented group of professionals who work extremely well together and I’m confident they will continue to put out a great local paper.”

Coppola signed on with the Mesa Tribune in 1990 before it became known as the East Valley Tribune. Over the years he had numerous roles there, including as business editor, metro editor and managing editor.

After spending two years as the newsroom’s second in command, Coppola was elevated in January to the top editing post when his predecessor, Jim Ripley, retired.

Coppola has since guided the newsroom amid the most rocky time in its history.

When he took over from Ripley, the paper’s California owners had just slashed 40 percent of the Mesa staff and ordered the publication to reduce its number of days in print from seven a week to four. Later, the company ordered even more layoffs and dropped the print edition to just three days a week.

But in April, the Tribune’s fortune changed for a brief time. Coppola helped the newspaper accept its highest honor when two journalists were given the Pulitzer Prize for an investigative series they wrote for the Tribune the year before.

The prize was a “shot in the arm,” he wrote in a column following the announcement. But Coppola also acknowledged “it was lost on nobody here that this award…had arrived at a challenging time for us.”

In September, those challenges got steeper. The California owners, Freedom Communications, filed for bankruptcy. Less than three weeks later, the company announced it would be trying to sell the newspaper to help it pay down more than $1 billion in debt.

But when no buyer stepped forward by November, Freedom announced something no one in Mesa wanted to hear: It planned to shut down the newspaper on New Year’s Eve.

Throughout it all, Coppola’s newsroom kept going. It even managed to publish a investigation called “Rigged Privilege,” which showed that a state education program meant to help the poor was being used to benefit the wealthy instead.

Since Freedom’s announcement of the closure, a Colorado company called Thirteenth Street Media has come forward saying it would like to buy the Tribune, and the shut down has been delayed indefinately while a possible deal is negotiated.

Coppola, though, will not be on the team. Still, he said he hopes he’ll have competition at the Arizona Republic, where he will be Scottsdale/Phoenix community editor based out of the paper’s Scottsdale bureau.

“I remain hopeful that Freedom and Thirteenth Street Media will reach an agreement soon that brings clarity to the future for everyone here,” Coppola said in an email on Thursday.

Meantime, it’s unclear who will lead the Tribune’s newsroom. Coppola said it’s a decision for Publisher Julie Moreno to make.

“It likely will involve several editors co-managing things by committee until the sale issue is resolved,” he said.

Coppola’s first day at the Republic is scheduled for Jan. 11.

[Full disclosure: I am a former staff reporter for the East Valley Tribune.]

Earlier this month, a spokesman for the Mesa newspaper’s parent, Freedom Communications, said Dec. 24 would likely be the day the company would tell a federal bankruptcy court about the deal it hopes to strike with a Colorado businessman wanting to buy the Tribune.

But late Thursday, after nothing had been filed with the court, company spokeswoman Maya Pogoda said attorneys “have not finalized the agreement” with hopeful buyer Randy Miller.

Pogoda did not elaborate on what caused the delay or when the company now plans to disclose the details of the bid.

Freedom had threatened to shutter the Pultizer Prize-winning publication on Dec. 31, but has since said it would keep it open while the company tries to negotiate with buyers.

Once Freedom tells the court about the bid by Miller, the judge will open up a public auction in which anyone can offer to buy the newspaper. The court, then, will ultimately decide which bid best serves Freedom’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

When Colorado businessman Randy Miller traveled to Mesa last week, he acted very much like the man who would soon be in charge of the Pulitzer Prize-winning East Valley Tribune.

He toured its facilities. He introduced himself to the staff. He even handed out job applications across the building, telling employees to reapply for positions under his Thirteenth Street Media company, which hopes to take over the paper early next year.

But Miller’s plans appear to be presumptuous. The reality is that Miller has a long way to go – and possibly competition to fight off – before he can expect to be called “boss” at the newspaper that was slated to be shut down before he offered to buy it last month.

And in fact, there is still a chance Miller won’t buy the East Valley Tribune at all – because in the end, the decision will be up to someone else entirely.

The uncertainty comes from the fact that the Tribune’s current owner, Freedom Communications, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and is still in the process of digging out from under it.

That means even if the owners want to sell directly to Miller, bankruptcy rules require them to put the newspaper up for a public auction instead. It also means anybody can bid for the paper, with a judge ultimately deciding who’s is best.

“They can’t just hand pick a bidder,” said bankruptcy attorney Todd Burgess with the Phoenix office of Gallagher & Kennedy. “It’s going to be an open and fair bidding process.”

Up for grabs

Neither Burgess nor his firm are representing any of the parties involved in Freedom’s bankruptcy or the Tribune’s sale. He explained in general terms how a newspaper or any other type of company can be sold during bankruptcies.

It’s a complicated process, he said, but it is designed to ensure the sale is fair to everyone involved.

So here’s how the process works: First, Burgess said, Freedom and Miller must file paperwork with the bankruptcy court, telling the judge what kind of deal they hope to make and creating a starting point for the auction.

From there, anybody else interested in buying the paper can jump in, offering more money or a better outcome for the newspaper. If they even hope to compete, their bids must rise above the starting point set by Freedom and Miller.

When all the offers are in, the court weighs each one, looking at whether the bidder has enough cash available to make the purchase and whether the deal will help Freedom repay the debt it owes. “You either need to see cash in a bank account or financing from a lender,” Burgess said.

Finally, the judge picks the winner, and the sale takes place soon after that. The whole thing can happen in less than a month, Burgess said.

For now, though, the Tribune’s sale is in a holding pattern. Neither Freedom nor Miller have told the court anything about the deal they hope to make. The auction process cannot begin until they do so.

Miller did not return multiple calls seeking comment, but Robert Emmers, a spokesman for Freedom, said the proposal will likely be filed with the federal bankruptcy court on Thursday – Christmas Eve.

Another possible buyer

Meantime, at least one other newspaper publisher is upset at the fact that Freedom is already giving Miller so much access to the Tribune and its employees.

“I just think it’s inappropriate,” said Stephen Hadland, the chief executive of the Santa Monica Media Company in California. “He doesn’t own it. He’s not the owner. And yet he’s being given carte blanche to rifle through all the stuff.”

Hadland said he, too, wants to buy the newspaper and has lined up investors to “aggressively” take on Miller in the auction. “I’m a little shocked that he’s already walking around like he owns the place,” Hadland said.

It wouldn’t be the first time the Santa Monica Media CEO has tried to buy the Tribune. Hadland said he nearly had a deal with Freedom back in August before the company made any public announcement that the newspaper was up for sale.

He said he even paid Freedom $2,200 in earnest money to prove he was serious about the deal. But the whole thing fell apart at the last minute, he said, because the company declared bankruptcy on Sept. 1, just days before the rest of his financing came through.

“It was just sad,” Hadland said. “It was just a sad moment for me.”

Freedom’s spokesman declined to comment about the possible August deal. But Hadland provided Heat City with a copy of a claim [PDF] he said he recently filed in the company’s bankruptcy case, asserting he had a deal to buy the Tribune for $2 million.

Though Hadland declined to discuss what he intends to bid now, that $2 million is significantly more than what he offered to pay for another Arizona newspaper earlier this year.

Hadland’s company was a bidder to save the Tucson Citizen newspaper, which at the time was Arizona’s oldest publication. But the bid of $400,000 was rejected by the Virginia-based media giant, Gannett Co., which chose to shut down the publication instead.

Now, Hadland said he hopes the judge will ultimately choose his bid for the Tribune over Miller’s. “We hope that we’re the successful bidder,” he said.

And while Freedom’s Emmers said the company is “proceeding to finalize a deal” with Thirteenth Street Media, he also acknowledged that other bidders such as Hadland will have the chance to challenge that choice in front a judge.

“Sure, the final OK has to come from the court,” Emmers said. But he added the judge will fully look at the legitimacy of each bid and determine whether financing is already in place. Competing bidders, Emmers said, will have to “put up or shut up.”

All the while, the Tribune remains in flux, though Emmers said the current owners intend to keep it open during the bidding process.

That, at least, is good news for the employees there. As recently as last month, the Irvine, Calif.-based media chain said it intended to close the newspaper by Dec. 31 if no one bought it.

[Disclosure: I am a former staff reporter at the East Valley Tribune.]

Even though no deal has been formalized to save the Pulitzer Prize-winning East Valley Tribune, a potential buyer is already telling its employees to reapply for their jobs.

Staffers of the Mesa newspaper received an email on Friday containing a job application [PDF] for Thirteenth Street Media, the Colorado company reportedly hoping to buy the ailing publication. The company has said it would keep “a significant” number of employees – but not all of them – if it buys the paper.

The email also told employees that Thirteenth Street Media’s owner, Randy Miller, would be in town this week to decide which staffers to keep if the deal goes through.

While those revelations may have been surprising enough for employees since the deal with Miller is nowhere near official, the real shockers came in the job application itself.

First, Miller asked employees which position they are applying for – a problem because Miller has not said which positions might be available.

Later, Miller asks applicants to include three references, but he adds one instruction: “Please do not include relatives or former employers.”

No former employers, you say? So who does he want listed? Friends? Community leaders? A journalist’s sources? It’s unclear.

Finally, Miller asks the question that every employee hoping to keep his or her job amid a recession dreads: “If your application receives favorable consideration, what salary/hourly rate would you require?”

But here’s the real kicker. At no point in the four-page application does Miller ask to see examples of the employee’s past work, a staple in the journalism world. He doesn’t ask the reporters to attach their past stories, photographers their photos or designers their, well, page designs.

Given his track record in Arizona of course, it’s unclear whether Miller is even interested in such things.

The email told interested employees to reapply for their jobs by Wednesday at noon.

[Full disclaimer: I am a former staff reporter for the East Valley Tribune.]